In North Carolina, students get their choice of charter schools, but those schools are increasingly divided by race. In this southern state, where some of the nation’s most noted school desegregation battles were waged, a recent Duke University study shows that many schools are either predominantly white or predominantly minority.

Across the country next week, schools, families and advocacy groups will host events to celebrate National School Choice Week. Most Southern states allow for some form of choice — magnet schools, vouchers for private schools, charter schools and more. How do these options affect learning, school demographics and student success?

It's only January, but one New Orleans high school has already held a graduation ceremony. The NET Charter High School is a small alternative school with just 150 students. Many dropped out of or were expelled from their previous schools.

Last weekend 19 of them received diplomas at the school's largest ever graduation ceremony.

When low-income students apply to school in New Orleans, they have three options: a handful of traditional public schools, mostly charter public schools, and private schools with voucher programs. How do these students and their families choose an option? A new study from Tulane's Education Research Alliance explores this question.

As 2015 winds down, we thought we'd take a look back at the year in education. WWNO's Education Reporter Mallory Falk has been covering New Orleans' almost all-charter system, in an ongoing measurement and monitoring of school reform since Hurricane Katrina.

Some cities have a range of programs for children with severe mental health needs: outpatient clinics, residential hospitals, therapeutic boarding schools. New Orleans isn’t one of them.

The city already had limited options when it shuttered its adolescent psychiatric hospital back in 2009. Now kids can receive some treatment in school or at home, or check into a hospital outside the city. But there's a new option for children with mental health needs.

In Mississippi, the Civil War still stirs emotions. It’s not so much that teachers disagree on how it should be taught, but that ongoing attempts by the University of Mississippi and several cities across the South to shed Confederate symbols have called up old ghosts. Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Sandra Knispel reports for the Southern Education Desk.